


Uncommonly Wicked

by brittlelimbs



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: ??? - Freeform, Adoptive sibling incest, Cuddling & Snuggling, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Masturbation, Past Abuse, Pining, Post-Canon, Touch-Starved, just a touch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 18:40:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8811793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittlelimbs/pseuds/brittlelimbs
Summary: “Credence—“ Newt’s hands are raised from his sides, poised for purposes unknown. Credence shudders, reaching out to take one of those wonderful, storied arms. Somehow, Mr. Scamander lets him. The scars feel like topography; his twin, the same, the same. He could cry for the joy of it.“Where did they come from?” Credence croaks, feeling the warm life force of Mr. Scamander thrum in his grip. “What did you do?” Or: Credence mistakes the scars on Newt's arms for the ones on his own.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My first crack at Crewt! (and honestly my first crack at h/c whoops)

Mr. Scamander is not like him. This has always been true. Credence shifts in his skin, and amend that: perhaps Mr. Scamander is not like _anyone._

From when Newt came to him in the subway like some sort of hunched, half-formed deliverance ( _an angel_ , Credence admits, later) crouched careful and observant while Credence stood dying on the tracks, burning up to pieces—there was a dynamic, established: savior, saved, the space between them written permanent in the city’s brick-bones. It hadn’t worked out in those terms at first, something about Credence being shredded into fine detritus by light, something about loss, but in the end it had all tumbled out okay. His wounded crawl to Newt’s suitcase had been only half-conscious and, mercifully, short; Newt collected him with the tip of his wand as if he weighed nothing more than ash, because he did, and then they were on the boat and that was the beginning of it. His new world.

 

So here they are: two strangers, rubbed against each other. Different species, odd dialects of person. Mr. Scamander is not like him and Credence learned of this that terrible night—no, wait—before it. That’s right. Seeing each other on the bleak stone stoop of the bank, just a shallow-skimmed glance, an assessment of the crowd and its typical fare and then _him_ , branded a little different than the rest in a blue coat that made Credence reel at its brightness. The color of velvet, a flavor of wet sky. When you see something important and you just don’t know it, yet; Credence hadn’t had the wherewithal to recognize the feeling by its curly hair and sensible boots because when God first showed him fate, he looked down at his shoes, instead.

 

(He still trembles at night in his modest bunk, hand gripped to his heart with his stupidity, because _what if—how had—_ )

 

Mr. Scamander speaks different, too, timbre curled and breathy, accented sweetly to match the rest of him. His voice is a rarity, for Credence, and as the days have passed with their shared company, he’s found that he quite covets the sound of it. Not like the hubbub of New Yorkers, folks that were never his, entirely, but that he lived threaded amongst as a stranger, their dialects lavish and confusing; the throatiness coming up from the Bronx, ‘r’s dropped, chewed-out vowels from Brooklyn, Manhattanese spoken so fast and so clipped that he could hardly squeeze himself between sentence gaps to plead _please, take a pamphlet, have you heard, did you know_. New Yorkers did not want to save themselves, he’d concluded; they simply didn’t have the time.

But Mr. Scamander—oh! He and his slow, soft sentences have all the time in the _world._ Credence can hardly believe it. Newt is soft on him in treatment, too; Credence has gotten into the habit of standing sentry by his elbow as they go through their daily abolitions, feeding, grooming, fixing, basking in the glory of their touching-close distance, and he hasn’t been dismissed once. He lets their fingers brush together when they pass the salt, even, over meals too rich and complex for Credence’s stomach (but that he feasts on, greedily), and the feeling is electric. They sleep in the same room, Newt bunked in the bed opposite, and Credence has found his presence enough to keep warm by at night. Swoonworthy: two days ago his unsteady hand dropped a pail of Mooncalf fodder, pellets floating out like tiny stars, and when he reached to his waist to find the belt Mr. Scamander picked him up by the arm, instead. Smiled at him, something crooked and nervous, but real nonetheless. _Hush, Credence. Oh—please, stop crying. It’s alright._ His hand burned hot as a coal around his bicep, but forgiveness, Credence found, feels cool and sweet. He caught himself leaning into the loveliness of it, washed clean.

Ma never taught forgiveness.

Mr. Scamander is different. In more literary terms (Newt, among so much else, is a writer): if Credence looks curved as a question mark, chin-dropped, mouth and countenance tucked into itself once, then again, Mr. Scamander is something more akin to a semi-colon. His body does not stop its movement, only pausing in progress to gather with a shuffle-click step, assess the world, and lilt on again. A strange sentence, he is, and one afternoon, with all abruptness: Credence can read him.

They’ve been at their jobs all day, quick but efficient in their work, Newt sweating quietly in the humid terrarium of his dugbog while Credence assists, swampwater sloshing about his knees. It’s very hot. They both shed their jackets and waistcoats, instead working in nothing but their thin, white buttonups, Credence flushing at the cut of Mr. Scamader’s body beneath. This appears to go unnoticed.

“The gullyroot,” Newt grunts, prizing open the poor creature’s jaws. It lets out an unhappy gurgle. “I need you to—hold its mouth, will you?”

Credence is swift and steady under instruction, always has been, and takes Newt’s grip in his place, sacred brush of fingers, again, threading his hands between nubbled teeth and feeling the sponged-mossiness of its wet flesh press against his palms. The force of its bite is strong, but Credence’s will to please is stronger. He enjoys the closeness of their panting space together as Newt leans close and works, taking a fat handful of the root, rolling up one dirty sleeve—

Scars. Tens, hundreds of them, crisscrossed up and down the gorgeous length of his tawny forearm, dusted with freckles, corded strong by manual labor.

Mr. Scamander’s body is written in scar tissue, and for the first time, Credence feels literate.

Then Newt plunges his arm into the creature’s gullet and they’re gone, consumed up to the elbow. The dugbog bucks and whinnies and scrabbles its tiny claws on the bark of its log-house, forcing Credence to buckle down, but Newt’s face is nothing but open, nothing but calm.

“Come on,” he whispers. A drop of sweat rolls down the bridge of his nose, drips from the tip. He twists his arm by some degrees. “Come, now, be good.” The dugbog sighs, shudders, before giving a final, squelching gulp.

“ _That’s_ my girl,” Mr. Scamader sighs, removing his arm with a slurp, the viciousness of the creature’s innards hanging in thick ropes between hand and mouth. His scars are glossed by it, raised, white. The sight is strangely lewd.

“Credence, let go,” says Newt. He does. The dugbog’s jaws snap shut.

Newt gives a pat to the creature’s head before producing his wand from his pocket with his clean hand, pressing the tip to his mucused, mutilated, magnificent arm—

“Where,” Credence’s voice is bubbling out of him before he can stop it. “Where did they come from?” He’s sloshing forwards in the swamp, cold mud curdling between his bare toes beneath the water, eyes fixed on Newt’s scars as he rolls up his own sleeves to compare. This is amazing. This is _enlightening_.

“What?”

Newt’s too late; Credence has already begun. The flesh of his inner arm is creamy in the light of their artificial sun, scars moreso. His history. He remembers it. He presses the pad of his finger to a long, crooked line that cuts countercurrent to the network of his veins, tracing it the way you would a boulevard on a map.

“I—this one— put too much salt in the soup, I think. Ma said I was wasteful.” His voice shakes, but he keeps going. He must. This is the indexicailty of his sins and he is _desperate_ to share it. He’s not even looking at Newt, anymore, already locked on another scar, teasing strands of memory from the thatch bound around his wrists, and they come easy: “This is for forgetting morning prayers. This one is for giving too much gruel to the children. This one was for staying out past dusk.” He follows the ridges: _and this one, the same, and this one, the same, and this one the same_. Mr. Grave’s series. He has much to thank that man for (for one thing: smooth palms, another: a sense of retribution), but he bides no time; there are so many, and he wants to know so much.

He looks to Newt, then, eyes wet with the enormity of this, stroking a fat, pink thumbprint pressed above his brachial.

“A poker, for this one. Coveting objects.” _A lined coat, frigid fingers fogging the glass of its display case as he pressed them against it, dizzy with cold, daydreaming about wool-suede-velour and sable._

Credence lets his eyes flutter closed and finds the deep scar, the real bad one that runs up-down his left forearm, by its indented texture alone. Willow switch. “Lustful thoughts,” he whispers. _In bed, underthings rucked around his thighs, gleaning his arousal from a half-glimpse of Chastity as she undressed, door cracked ajar in its ill-fit jamb. The shame was so hot and so acute that he felt like molten iron in his palm, unable hush himself behind the fist clenched to his mouth as he tried to be good, tried to be clean. Purify himself of the shape of her, the implication of her pert chest and the treasure at the apex of her thighs in the dim light of her bedroom. Her softness, her warmth, enough to push him over and plunge him down. The spend on his belly: Ma hadn’t known it was his sister’s fault--_

“Credence—“ Newt’s hands are raised from his sides, poised for purposes unknown. Credence shudders, reaching out to take one of those wonderful, storied arms. Somehow, Mr. Scamander lets him. The scars feel like topography; his twin, the same, _the same_. He could cry for the joy of it.

“Where did they come from?” Credence croaks, feeling the warm life force of Mr. Scamander thrum in his grip. “What did you do?”

 

Newt’s mouth folds into a thin, unhappy line. “I didn’t… Oh, Credence,” he sighs. Slowly, but deliberately, he breaks his wrists from Credence’s hold, and for a second, Credence flinches away from the blow he’s sure will come—but he only turns up his arm. It’s paler on the underside, but no less marked. He points to a scribbled mass of thick keloid scar. “Graphorn,” he says carefully. He points to another: “Jarvey bite.”

“ _Oh_ ,” breathes Credence.

He looks up and sees Newt watching him, eyes steady and dark, from under his golden lashes.

“Creatures tend to leave an… impression, on you. I happen to have more impressions than some,” says Mr. Scamander.

So he is not evil, Credence thinks. His legs don’t feel as certain as they did a few moments before. Shame takes his breath from his lungs.

“Mr. Scamander—I’m so sorry—“ The water sloshes violently at the backs of his calves, mud sucking at his feet again, shuffing his sleeves back down his arms with both hands because he can hardly bear for Newt to see them another second, can hardly bear for Newt to see _him_ another second for the sheer awfulness of his embarrassment—

“Credence!”

_A bad boy. Uncommonly wicked._

_Yes,_ Credence agrees, even as he tumbles backwards into the swamp. The water is turbid and silty and so, so cold.

Mr. Scamander is not like him, but then again: no one should be.

 

 

Newt saves him, of course. That accords very neatly with the order of things. The water stings in Credence’s eyes and nose and mouth like some unkind baptism but he can feel the linen of Newt’s shirt just fine with clinging hands, heartbeat cupped under his palm through the thinness of skin. They’re in an awkward sort of hug, a half-carrying embrace that leaves him blind to all worlds but this human one he’s wrapped up inside, reverb of bone and flesh, voice. Mr. Scamander is talking to him.

“We’re alright,” he’s muttering. “We’re alright.” Credence’s heart jumps at the _we_ but nothing is alright even remotely, oh, and he pulls away. Newt doesn’t let him far, one hand on the back oh his neck, returning forehead to sternum with a firm push, but Credence has seen enough: there are dark spots on Newt’s shirt, and he realizes, belatedly, that he’s crying.

“I—I—“ he searches for an apology, and explanation, but there is none. How do you reconcile all his badness, his brokenness. His jaw chatters and his wet cheeks rub futilely against Mr. Scamander’s chest. Words won’t come.

“Hush,” says Newt. The world jumps to obey; there’s the not-quite familiar warp-jolt of apparating and then a comfortable sort of silence, whisked back into the confines of the cabin. The air is dusky and dim, crowded with the warm solidness of books and various odds and ends Credence has come to associate with Mr. Scamander.

They sit, for some time, together on Credence’s narrow bunk, Newt holding him in his lap in the most gentle way he knows how. He smells like mud and the ozone-tingle of magic. They don’t speak; Credence cries, Newt hums. But it’s something.

Eventually, Credence finds his voice, though it's gummed and tiny with tears.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought—you might be the same.”

He feels Newt shift, slowly removing his wand from his pocket again, and trembles as he whispers spells into the crook of Credence’s neck. At once, all their clothes shiver dry around his limbs and Credence nearly hiccups at the curiosity of the feeling.

“No, Credence. You’re quite unique,” Newt says. The words sound like another spellstring, gossamer, bewitching. “More so than other being I’ve had the pleasure of encountering.”

Credence knows he’s talking about his—Obscurus—but hopes, pretends otherwise. He buries his face further into Newt’s shoulder, enjoying the brush of his shorn-short gingery hair against his ear.

“I’m not whole, Mr. Scamander” he confesses. “I’ve got so much missing.” He shies away, wanting, desperately, to cover his face with his hands or arms, somehow shield Mr. Scamander’s from the view of his wretched body.

“Oh, Credence.”

Newt’s sigh sounds full of things Credence can’t quite identify, but he’s being taken back in, wrestled with all the same firm, abiding calm he uses on the dugbog, or the niffler, or the knarl. He rubs Credence’s back with big, long strokes until his sobs are silent and his tears have dried to his cheeks.

“Good,” he breathes. “There’s a boy.”

\--

They sleep together in Credence’s bed that night _, you_ _need a little body heat,_ care nudged at and insisted upon, protests ignored. After all the fussing of bedtime routines, he finally shivers on Newt’s chest, wrapped round and round, head riding the easy in-out cadence of slumbering breath. The heat of Mr. Scamander and his goodness is exquisite. The curl of his question-mark body fits to Newt’s punctuation so well, he thinks.

His scars burn and burn in the bluedark. Mr. Scamander sleeps; he does not. But this is fine, for they are different. Always have been, and if this is a sin—he will gladly take retribution for it, too.


End file.
